Funny

xkcd

But of course I'm psychic!

Right now everyone is teaching Forces and Motion. This means a lot of dynamics trolleys, masses, dataloggers and light gates are getting moved around from lab to lab.

Yesterday one of my teachers had ordered the full kit, plus the air track for a demo. I started getting it all set up in his lab during lunch break. He was sat at his desk eating his sandwiches and chatting to a student while I carried in trays of stuff and set them out on the side bench, before fetching the air track.

It must've taken me a good 5 minutes to get it all in place, at which point he piped up and said 'Oh, by the way Labtech666, I'll only need the air track today'.  'I thought you ordered the trolleys too' I replied.
'Yes I did', he said, 'but they don't get such good results so I decided to just do the air track demo'.

Fair enough, but wouldn't it have been nice if he'd said something BEFORE I started shifting loads of kit into his lab. He watched me do it for crying out loud!
Am I meant to be psychic and just know when they've changed their mind about a practical? Or maybe I should ask them before every lesson just to check.
Or, here's a novel idea, maybe they could have the courtesy to let me know what's going on.
Yeah, right!

So Cold

We've had some lovely weather lately. Sunny days, clear nights, misty mornings - exactly why I love autumn.

See? It's great!

My only issue is my prep room. Why does it have to be so flipping cold??

I'm not inappropriately dressed for the time of year (2 pairs of socks, jeans, long sleeved top and a cardigan), but I'm wishing I'd put on gloves, a scarf and a woolly hat this morning.

The temperature at the moment is just below 15C and it is not pleasant. If I was at home I'd have whacked the heating up and I'd be huddling under a duvet until it kicked in.



Counting

If I put out a box of screw drivers labelled '10 PLEASE COUNT BACK', how many screw drivers do you think there should be in the box at the end of the lesson?

8? 9?

Nope. There should be 10. Why is that so hard to understand?

Because teachers don't bother to count we now have a kid somewhere in the school with a screw driver. Hope it turns up soon!

Handle with Care

I was just going through an old file, deleting stuff I don't need any more and came across this photo that I took a couple of years ago. I don't know whether it was the delivery company or the stewards here at school who caused my clearly fragile parcel to arrive in this state, but it made me laugh (once I'd checked that nothing was actually broken!).

Return to Work interview - the fallout

Well it wasn't exactly a simple box-ticking exercise yesterday.

Apparently I have had too many days off sick and now I'm going to start losing pay if I am ill again. Initially HR reckoned that I had taken 27 days sick this year. I looked back through all my e-mails and could only find 20, which of course includes 17 days signed off by the hospital because I broke my arm and couldn't work. HR however are counting an overall 12 month period, so the stomach bug I had last November counts, as does the streaming cold I had in October. I still couldn't get it to 27 days, until I noticed that they'd counted 4 days in January before term started, when I wouldn't have been at work anyway! I got them to discount those days but they aren't prepared to budge on the rest.

What does this mean? Well, basically I can't afford to be ill again until mid January. Or alternatively, I can be ill but I have to come to work and infect everyone else regardless of whether I am suffering with a streaming nose, projectile vomiting or bubonic plague. I'm sure that will make everyone very happy - NOT!!

Told my HoD all this when I got to work this morning and he was not amused. Yesterday he had a meeting with the Head to discuss the past year in Physics, and apparently I came in for a lot of praise for all the stuff that I do for the department above and beyond my job description. So while the Head thinks I'm doing a great job, HR think I'm slacking. Nice!

HoD has told me to start logging all my hours so we can prove the extras that I do, and has also told me that if HR carry on being obnoxious, he'll just go to the Head. It's good to know that someone's got my back. I may grumble about the guy, but I have a really great HoD!

Return to Work interview

Back in January, I had to take a month off work thanks to a broken and dislocated bone in my arm. When I got back something was vaguely mentioned about needing to give me a 'Return to Work' interview to make sure I was ok to do my job and assess whether I needed any extra support. This never actually happened and now, 9 months down the line, I'm pretty much healed although still with reduced mobility and some pain.

11 days ago I took a day off because I woke up with a killer migraine - nausea, visual disturbances, the works! Apparently a day off for a migraine is more important than a month off with a broken arm because I've just been informed that my absence means I have to have a meeting with the Head of Science this afternoon to fill in the return to work form.
Not entirely sure what this is meant to achieve. Sometimes I get migraines. Nothing the school, or I, can do is likely to change this fact. It's been this way for 20 years or more.
Sounds like an HR box-ticking exercise to me!

Interesting stuff!

Faster than light neutrinos

Wish I was going on the CERN trip this year!

Friday Funny

xkcd

Is that my job?

Every day I get asked to do a wide variety of stuff, some of which is very clearly a part of my job, but some of which really isn't. So, I present:

Stuff that's my job

• Preparing equipment for practical physics lessons and ensuring that it's in the right room at the right time.
• Repairing any bits of equipment which get broken. (Mainly changing batteries and fuses, sometimes a bit of soldering)
• Sourcing new equipment and dealing with ordering.
• Managing the budget
• Trialling new experiments eg ISA practicals
• Helping out in the lab during practicals
• Demoing experiments during lessons
• First Aid

Stuff that's not my job, but which I still get asked to do

• Booking plane tickets
• Invigilating exams when they can't find anyone else
• Contacting kids' parents
• Entering exam results onto the system
• Photocopying
• Setting work when a teacher is away but hasn't sorted out any cover
• Taking phone messages from my HoD's wife

And today's prize example - find out where the course is which my HoD is supposed to be on. Seiously, he called me at 9.15 to ask me to log on to his e-mails and check the venue for his course because he'd forgotten to write it down. Sometimes I despair.

Visitor from Rome, part 2

As expected, Brother Guy's lecture last night was awesome.

He talked about ideas in astronomy that were almost right, but ultimately ended up being totally wrong. He covered Ptolemy, Copernicus, my favourite astronomer Tycho Brahe and even his own master thesis from 1975 which was a study of Jupiter's moon Europa.

He's a really interesting and entertaining speaker and I think the students got a lot out of it.

A visit from Rome

Brother Guy has come to visit the school for a few days and is giving a lecture tonight on astronomy which should be really good.

I should mention at this point that I am not religious. I've no problem with people who want to believe in God, but personally I don't.
That being said, I'm finding it hard to understand the fuss everyone is making. The school chaplain is practically soiling his cassock with excitement that we've got a visitor from the Vatican and teachers are planning 'special' lessons for Br Guy to watch.

Why??

Ok, so he's a Jesuit who works for the Vatican, but ultimately he's a scientist and a really nice bloke. When we met him in Rome back in april he was great fun to spend time with and remarkably unpreachy. The way everyone is carrying on, you'd think that God himself had climbed down off his magic cloud to pay us a visit, or at the very least that the Pope had decided to pop in..

Never mind, they'll get over it. In the meantime I am really looking forward to tonight's lecture. :)

Friday Funny

Of course it's from xkcd

Overcrowding

Our school is flourishing, which in the current economic climate was by no means guaranteed. However, this does have a downside. In order to make as much money as possible we take on more students, but I get the impression that no one stopped to think about whether we could actually fit them in!

One of my labs is tiny and can just seat 20. There's not enough room for them to do practical, but we can at least get bums on seats and teach them stuff. Unfortunately we have a couple of classes this year with 22 students. You see the problem? We managed to get hold of a couple of folding desks and some old chairs and shoe-horned them in, so the lab is crammed full of kids. I also had to order more text books once I saw the set lists, but I got enough and now each kid has a book, a seat and a desk.

It appears though that biology didn't take action in quite the same way we did.

All the biology teachers are away on a field trip today, and one of the new year 9 sets was due to have their first biology lesson this morning. I've just spoken to the teacher who covered the lesson, and he was not impressed! There was a seating plan, showing where each of the 22 kids should be seated in the lab, but, not only did 2 of the seats not exist, the bio teacher knew they didn't because he had written no seat on the plan.
Didn't think to try and obtain said seats then mate?

Makes my department actually look organised!

Am I a travel agent?

I currently have a small tower on my desk, composed of kids' passports. I've got British, Nigerian, German, Hong Kong and even Kazakhstan!

'But why?', I hear you cry.

Well, the annual trip to CERN is only a couple of months away and it's time to book flights. More specifically, it's time for ME to book flights. I always get lumbered with this job and this time round I'm not even going on the trip.

Freebie

Want a FREE poster about the maths of engineering?

Just click HERE and fill in the form. :)

Gold Leaf Electroscope

Got my Gold Leaf Electroscopes out this morning, ready for a lesson, only to discover that 4 of them have no gold leaf. Not a problem - I quite like fitting new gold leaf. It's a bit fiddly but not difficult.

Here is my 'how to' guide to fitting gold leaf.

Disclaimer - this is not the only way, probably not even the best way. It's just my way.

Remove any traces of old gold leaf or adhesive from the stem of the electroscope and clean off any grease with a little ethanol.

With the gold leaf (actually it's an alloy called dutch metal) between 2 thin pieces of paper, cut a strip 40mm by 5mm.

Cut a thin strip of sellotape and stick it to the top end of the gold leaf  then carefully position onto the stem. Reassemble electroscope and admire your handywork!

There's a guide here on the lovely TechKnow website which shows a different way to attach the gold leaf, using spit. I've not tried it, but it may be worth a try!

New Chair!

My department have got me a new chair. This is very exciting!

I used to sit on this, which was hard and uncomfortable and gave me backache, not to mention a numb backside.

But now I have this, which is comfy and soft, plus I can twirl around on it. Unfortunately it is slightly too low for my desk, but frankly I don't care.

I have a comfy chair! Yay!

The rules apply to everyone

... except teachers, apparently!

Last term we were all asked to register our cars with the transport manager, who issued parking permits which we display above our tax disc. Yesterday we were reminded that there shouldn't be any cars parked on double yellow lines to ensure that traffic can move around the site easily.

I've just watched one of my physics teachers park on the double yellow line outside my prep room window, and he hasn't got a permit in his car.

Why am I not surprised?

Here we go again!

Not sure what happened to the past 8 weeks, but here we are - back at school. The kids don't start back until next week, but we've got lots of lovely (not!) staff meetings.

Also of course I have to try to get my department organised. The building work is all done and the new staff work room looks lovely. It'll be better once it has some computers and chairs, but they've done an amazing job so far. I have a shiny new door on my prep room, which has a glass panel in it so I'm less likely to get knocked over by teachers barging in now, and it's on the same key as the rest of the department so I have fewer keys in my pocket. All the interactive whiteboards are in too, but they moved a lot of stuff around and ripped out some cupboards in the process of installing them so my job tomorrow is to tidy the labs.

For today, I'm unpacking my stationery order (which is like christmas - I love it!) and sorting out timetables. I'm a geek so I like to print out the department timetable and highlight all my teachers in different colours so I can so who's where when. Isn't it pretty? :) (I know - small things please small minds!)

HoD doesn't exactly have an office yet. They've put a desk in the old lab/store room and we spent some time this morning getting him semi-organised. Still waiting for the computer and phione to be connected though.

The new Bio Tech has started. Chem Tech is shepherding her around the place at the moment. I'm leaving him to it! He does love to give himself jobs so he feels important, and who am I to stop him?

Is the ship sinking?

So, it's the summer holidays. Been off work almost 2 weeks and I thought I should check my e-mails. After all, the support staff with year-round contracts (rather than term time only, like me) are still working, so there might be stuff going on that I should know about.

It turns out that today the Head of Grounds resigned and the Head Steward accepted redundancy. The support staff team already lost the Head Cleaner, Biology Technician, a matron and the DT Technician this year. That's a lot of key people gone!

So what I'm wondering with these latest changes, is what exactly is going on? Stuck in the science block I don't tend to hear all the news and I don't have a manager from within the support staff team so don't get any feed back on meetings etc. I know the new-ish Bursar has pissed off a lot of people and don't even get me started on the HR people!

Is it time to start looking for a new job before I find myself forced to?

One thing's for sure, the school is turning into a very different place from the one I joined nearly 4 years ago and that saddens me.

School's Out!

Happy summer everyone

They do care!

Some days you feel like no one appreciates anything you do and you're totally being taken for granted.

Today is not one of those days! My HoD and another physics teacher have just given me a HUGE bunch of flowers, a bottle of champagne and a card to thank me for all my hard work this academic year.

The end is in sight

It's the last week of term!! *happy dance*

There aren't any lessons happening this week, so it's time to get everything put away and make sure the labs are clean and tidy. They won't be by the time we get back in september mind you, because we're having interactive white boards installed over the holidays, but at least I can say I tried!

Friday Funny

xkcd of course!

Timetable

Just been going through the current draft of the Physics timetable for September and oh boy am I going to be busy! This year I have had a couple of days (notably thursdays) with not much going on which has enabled me to catch up on things like equipment repairs. No such luck next year though. Every day is busy, with anywhere from 11 to 17(!) lessons to prep. Obviously some of that will be theory, but it's still way more than this year.

As mentioned before, we have 3 non-specialists teaching Physics next year, and their lessons are all over the place. I've got stuff happening on all 3 floors of the science block at times! Thankfully they're usually pretty good about room swaps so I shouldn't have to carry too much large/heavy kit up all those stairs. My arm is still not recovered from when I dislocated my elbow, and heavy lifting is no fun! At least all my lessons are going to be in the science block - I haven't seen the Chemistry room allocations, but Biology have a few lessons in far-flung corners of the school.

On the subject of Biology, we interviewed 3 potential new technicians last week. I gave them a bit of a guided tour of science and filled them in on the stuff that HR didn't tell them. Haven't heard yet whether we've appointed or not. It'd be nice to know before the end of term (not long to go now!).

I love a freebie!

The lovely people at Gratnells are offering a free colour changing mug if you get them in to quote for storage in your school. I follow them on Twitter and happened to mention that I thought it was an awesome mug, and guess what? They sent me one!

Thank you Gratnells!

Friday Funny

xkcd

Planning ahead

It's getting close to the end of the academic year now, so we're into planning mode for next year. We decided to get the books ordered good and early in case anything was out of stock and they arrived yesterday:

The 6th form AS and IB books we ordered based on numbers we were given a month or so back, but latest figures are in and we seem to have under ordered! For the first time ever there are going to be more lower 6th students studying physics than either biology or chemistry - 47 compared to 42 and 41 respectively. That's 25 new AS students and 22 for IB.

Obviously all the extra stuff we do (vatican, CERN, observatory etc) has raised the profile of the physics department and everyone wants to be involved. All I can say is WOOHOO!! It's going to mean more work for everyone but it should be a lot of fun.

A cunning plan

Back to work after a week off for half term, and only 4 weeks til the summer holidays so we're not exactly complaining!

Just got an e-mail from the powers that be setting out the master plan for changes happening in the science block and after all that, they're not touching the prep room! Needless to say I am very pleased about that. HoD is now going to have office space in our project lab/store room which I cleared a lot of junk from before half term, and his office and the corridor next to it is becoming a new staff work room.

It's going to be a nuisance trying to get any of my holiday work done with all the building work happening, but in the long run I think this might actually work out.

Friday Funny

More geeky loveliness from xkcd

Nothing ever changes

In the course of our big clear up, I have found a report from 1947 on the provision of laboratory assistance in schools:

The really depressing thing is that it's saying almost exactly the same as much more recent reports from CLEAPSS, in terms of how there need to be more technicians in schools with better training, pay and conditions. I can't believe we're still in the same position over 60 years later!

This report is itself an update on one from 1938, although I guess the war kind of got in the way! One thing I'm glad we don't have any more is 'laboratory monitors'. It suggests paying pupils of the school do do lab tech work in their free time. Eep!

At least there has been one major improvement since 1947. The pay scales in this report suggest that women should be paid 80% of the salary that their male counterparts get. Thank goodness we've moved on from those days!

The Big Clear Up

It's begun. I've spent a couple of hours today shifting junk out of the labs and prep room and piling it up in the lobby of the science block.

This is just the beginning, but we need to get the maintenance guys to dispose of this lot before I do anymore, plus my dodgy arm (which I broke and dislocated last year) is starting to really hurt!

Overheard

There's an English Literature exam this morning, and there's a queue of kids outside my prep room waiting to get into the computer suite next door.

Girl 1: I can't believe I was called stupid right before my exam.
Girl 2: What happened?
Girl 1: (boy) said I was as thick as 2 short planks.
Girl 2 (happily): Oh, that's a simile!

Job Vacancy

My colleague in biology is retiring at the end of term, so we're now looking for a replacement.

The ad went in the paper the other day, and all the info is on the college website HERE. If you're an experienced biology tech we'd love to hear from you.

Friday Funny

Another geeky comic from xkcd

Just weird

As I mentioned before, my HoD is away at the moment and everyone jokes that I am running the department in his absence. Ho ho, very funny ( and mostly true!).

No one told me that I was responsible for his tutees though! I've just had an e-mail from a parent asking me to chase up some details regarding her son being allowed to use a laptop in his A-Level exams. This is so far beyond anything in my job description that I don't have an adequate metaphor for it.
I know the teaching staff seem to think that I do the HoD's job for him most of the time, but I didn't realise that had filtered down to parents too.

I forwarded the e-mail to the exams officer an hopefully that will be the end of it. They really don't pay me enough to deal with parents!

Clearing up and out

My HoD is out for the next 3 days, and since the GCSE, A-Level and IB exams have all started the department is pretty quiet.

Ideal time to start getting organised ready to relinquish half my prep room from september.
There's a lot of building work starting around the school very shortly, and one consequence is that a lot of teachers are losing their studies. It appears that a studyless teacher is not a happy beast! The head of science is one of those affected and in order to find space for him to have a study in the science block I am being turfed out of the outer section of my prep room (currently my office space). My HoD and another physics teacher are going to have that space for their study and the head of science is (I think) taking over my HoD's room.
This is the perfect excuse to throw out a lot of old junk that's been cluttering up the place. I probably should've done it when I got here 3 years ago, but I didn't have the confidence. No qualms now though!

The major downside to this game of 'musical rooms' is that I'm going to have to walk through the HoD's study every time I go in or out of my room, plus I'll have 2 physics teachers practically in the room with me probably being annoying.
On the plus side though, every time a kid knocks on the door it won't be me who gets disturbed!

Staffing and other issues

Looks like all change for next academic year.

I mentioned before that we're losing a physicist, well the decision has definitely been made not to replace him. Apparently science is overstaffed. Not quite sure how it's our fault that management keep hiring biologists and chemists, but there we go. As a result we're having 2 chemists and a biologist teaching physics next year. Should be interesting...

Our biology technician is retiring at the end of term too. They haven't started looking for a replacement yet. I just hope they find someone experienced because there's no way that either me or the chemistry technician will have time to train them, and actually chemistry technician has never done bio in his life so it'd end up being me! Advert is meant to be going in the paper this week so I will definitely be posting it on all the technicain sites I can think of.

In other news, it looks like I'm going to lose half my prep room. Not definite yet so more news on that when I have it.

Positivity

I grumble a lot (and will continue to do so!) but I thought I would start the week on a more positive note by thinking about the stuff I love about my job.

1) The money. Sorry to sound mercenary, but isn't that why we all go to work in the first place? I'd like more money, obviously, but I'm not badly paid at all especially when you take into account...

2) The food. We get all our meals provided while we're at work as well as tea/coffee, and the food is goood as my waist line clearly demonstrates! So far I've managed to avoid the temptation of breakfast. I think a fry up or croissants every day might tip me over the line into the realms of morbid obesity.

3) The location. I have quite a drive to get to work, but it's so worth it. There are stunning views of the countryside and we're only a 5 minute walk from the local reservoir which is a lovely place to take a sandwich and a book during summer lunch breaks.

4) The holidays. Independent school = long holidays. Unpaid sadly, but we can't have everything!

And probably most importantly...
5) The people. My department are lovely even though I complain about them, and the rest of the staff are just as friendly and supportive. In previous schools I've felt a divide between academic and support staff but I don't get that here at all.

Phew, what a lot of nice stuff to think about.
Normal grumbling will resume shortly I'm sure. :)

And today's crisis is....

Picture the scene:
It's 8.15am, first day of the new term. Panicky teacher appears at my prep room door.

PT: My computer won't start. I don't think the power is working in my lab.
Labtech666: Have you checked the electrical shut off? (It's a switch which kills all power to the plug sockets in case of emergency)
PT: Yes, I think so.
Labtech666: Well that's strange, all the other labs seem to have power. Let me take a look.

I walk into the lab and turn the switch, resetting it.

Labtech666: Try now.
PT: Oh wow, it's working!!

*sigh*

Funny

This made me laugh

From a fab website of sciency and geeky cartoons: xkcd

Hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work we go!

Was that it?? Is the Easter holiday really over already? Damn it!

Inset today, in other words loads of boring meetings, then the kids are back tomorrow.

Not that I'm counting or anything, but at least it's only 4 1/2 weeks to half term. :)

Sonisphere


Sonisphere TV

Vatican Observatory

So, the trip to the Vatican Observatory has been completed. A couple of hitches along the way, but mostly very successful.

Originally this trip was supposed to happen in december, but Gatwick airport was closed for 3 days due to heavy snow so we had to cancel. Actually this was probably a good thing, because Rome in april is lovely!
We had trouble getting hotel rooms as Rome appeared to be full, so we ended up at an allegedly 4-star hotel in some distant suburb. Not the best place I've ever stayed, but it did the job.

We were due to visit the observatory, which is located at the Pope's summer palace 15 miles south of Rome, on friday morning. Unfortunately we discovered that there was a train strike so we had to change our plans again and friday became sightseeing day instead.

Saturday was 3rd time lucky and we finally made it to Albano where the observatory head quarters are located in a former nunnery just off the town square. We were met by Brother Guy Consolmagno, the curstor of the Vatican's meteorite collection, who gave us a tour of the building, including his workroom



and showed us some of the books from the observatory's library, including a second edition of Newton's 'Principia' which did make me squeal with excitement ever so slightly (yes, I'm a geek!)

After a walk through the pope's gardens, we went into the papal palace where the telescopes are on the roof. One of the dome's was having work done on it, so we couldn't see the refractor telescope, but we went to see the double astrograph

which was awesome, and somewhat more impressive than the telescopes we have back at school!

I think the kids really enjoyed the whole trip and I definitely did.

Now to relax and enjoy the Easter hols!

Home again...

Just got back from a tiring, eventful but very worthwhile 6th form trip to Rome and the Vatican Observatory.
Details to follow

Just saying...

Check out Sonisphere - the greatest rock festival on the planet! http://team.sonispherefestivals.com/s.php?t=8&m=38

Completely irrelevant, but if you click the link I can win stuff.
I like winning stuff.

Trips

.. as in visits, not accidents.

We're taking a group of 20 sixth form students to Rome on thursday to visit the Vatican observatory. Should be a great trip and I'm looking forward to it.

Drowning in paperwork though!
We've got everyone's permission slips, copies of passports, all the flight info printed out, info about the hotel, copies of the school's insurance policy, risk assessments, all the info about getting to and from the observatory and probably a lot more besides that I've forgotten about.
Before we leave it'll all have to be photocopied half a dozen times because all the staff on the trip need a copy, and there are a couple of people at school who have to have it too.

I can't wait to get on the plane and forget about paperwork for a couple of days. Until we get back! :(

PAT Time

It's nearly Easter, which can mean only one thing.
No, not me stuffing my face with loads of chocolate (although I'm sure I will).
Nope, it's Portable Appliance Testing time again.

Because the testing always happens over the Easter holidays, I most likely won't be here when the PAT men are in so I need to get everything out onto the benches for them before we break up next week. There's a lot of portable appliances in physics. I've found somewhere in the region of 300 so far and everytime I think I've got them all, I turn around and see another plug waving at me.

The annoying thing is that half this stuff probably won't get tested anyway. Last year the PAT men managed to miss my prep room, and the year before they missed Lab 1. My money is on Lab 4 getting missed this year.

Staffing

One of my teachers is leaving in the summer to become head teacher somewhere ridiculously exotic. I'm really pleased for him and he'll make a wonderful head.
We haven't seen too much of him over the last couple of years because as well as being a physics teacher he's also SMT and therefore has a really light timetable, but I'm still going to miss him a lot. He interviewed me when I came for this job and he's always been good to me.

Here's the problem though - the school aren't replacing him. Oh, of course they'll be advertising for a new director of studies but not for a physics teacher.

The thinking is that he only teaches 9 hours a fortnight so colleagues should be able to cover that. Nice idea, but it ain't that simple.

From september we're going to have an extra IB set in year 12 and an extra A2 set in year 13. That's 14 more teaching hours to find from somewhere on top of the 9 we're losing. Suddenly we're down by half a teacher!

That's ok though! The physics specialists can teach 6th form and years 10/11 and year 9 can be taught by biologists and chemists. I don't know about you, but if I was paying many thousands of pounds for my child's education I'd be pissed off to find that they weren't being taught by a specialist.

There is of course one more issue that no one will have spotted. Some one is going to have to show these non-specialists how to do the practicals. Guess who's going to get that job?

*Sigh*

Resistors, more resistors and some capacitors

There's an A2 ISA tomorrow morning. Cue the mass panic!

Obviously I can't go into specific details (despite the fact that kids have been discussing the items in various forums since september), but there's A LOT of electrical components needed. The instructions say that the resistors need to be clearly labelled.

Now, when I was in year 7 I got taught the resistor colour code.

It's not that complicated, and it means that any resistor you pick up is already clearly labelled. Apparently that's too complicated for our year 13s though. It would tax their little brains to have to work out the resistances for themselves! As a result I have had to spend hours printing labels and attaching them to the appropriate resistor.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse - the capacitors need labelling so the little dears don't connect them back to front. Foolishly I assumed that our capacitors were already sufficiently labelled. After all, they have a very clear 'minus' sign on one side, and the leg is shorter on that side. Not good enough! More labels required.

The icing on the cake however came with the batteries. I had put the batteries in their holder with the pre-printed 'plus' and 'minus' clearly visible. Surely that would be ok?
Of course not! Each battery pack now needs a printed label attached to the 'plus' terminal.

So far I've spent a good 5 hours over several days prepping just this one practical. I'll be in early tomorrow to get it set out in the lab. Joy!